Lovely Low German audio example
I just discovered a lovely, clear audio recording of Low German / Plattdütsch:
http://www.geo-special.de/GEO/kultur/50197.html
Scroll down to "Hamburger Platt mit Silke Frakstein" and click the audio sample on the right. Silke Frakstein speaks very clearly about her role as a Plattdütsche entertainer.
I was really amazed that I could understand 90 % of everything she said!
Serbo-Canadian in China,
Do not act like an idiot please.
Frederik,
The sample is nice (and samples this clear are very rare)
But, sadly, it reinforces my feeling that soon (or already) Dutch and Afrikaans are the only remaining "pure" low German languages.
You can clearly hear the devastating effect of High German on Low German, reduced to a dialects, and on its way of becoming a high german dialect, fast.
Jav:
Yeah, one surely hears that Low German is heavily infleunced by High German today. But I wouldn't say it's necessarily bad that Low German becomes a High German dialect. Because as long as it is mutually intelligible with High German, there is the possibility that people can actually use Low German on a daily basis in Northern Germany, like Swiss German in Switzwerland.
The worst case scenario is that Low German dies a slow death as a separate, incomprehensible nostalgic museum piece full of antiquated yesterday's words like the "skuulmeester" discussed in the audio sample. Why can't they just say "leerer", as in High German, Dutch and the Nordic languages? Low German will aboslutely die if it's speakers don't move beyond 1950 in their vocabulary.
As a Norwegian I probably have another view of Low German than most people in Northern Germany / the Netherlands. For you, Low German is a "buurentaal", a rural dialect. In Norway, Low German has a legacy of being a posh bourgeois language, because of the Hanse and the Danish-North German elite in the Danish-Norwegian monarchy. Thus I think Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks to be better representatives of Low German than some Low Saxon swine farmer.
>>Why can't they just say "leerer", as in High German, Dutch and the Nordic languages? Low German will aboslutely die if it's speakers don't move beyond 1950 in their vocabulary.
<<
Hehehe, now I'm feeling a bit awkward ... we say also say "schoolmeester" ;-)
>>Yeah, one surely hears that Low German is heavily infleunced by High German today. But I wouldn't say it's necessarily bad that Low German becomes a High German dialect.
<<
It's not necessarily bad no, I believe it already happened, but it does mean that more and more dialects are disappearing.
Not that in the case of Low German I would mind though, I think it's a rather ... erm, "despensable" language.I mean I like languages that are true to themselves, Low German wasn't/isn't, if I wanted to see some ugly hybrid between a high german and a low german language I'd simply set the spellcheck to Dutch when typing a German text in word.
Jav wrote:
"I like languages that are true to themselves, Low German wasn't/isn't"
That is probably where our viewpoints crash. As a Norwegian I have a really hard time understanding that Low German could be pure/true in any sense.
We tend to see Low German (and Dutch) as an urban, bourgeois language, great for commercial bargaining and social chichat, but hardly a language to expect lyrical, mythical poetry from.
Well that doesn't matter, I mean there were great Dutch philosophers and writers and Dutch truly can be beautifull in any form from a childrens bedtime book (Nijntje/Miffy is just spot on) to literature like the Discovery of Heaven or even the expanded Dutch version of Reynard the Fox (Vanden vos Reynaerde).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_literature
On the other I think the Dutch image of Norwegian literature or language is ( apart from being pretty bad) virtually limited to the idea that "The small portion of those whalehunters that actualy can write, probably couldn't get passed a grocery list"
(Note: I am using the terms Low Saxon and East Low German to refer to the two main separate Low German dialect groups outside of Low Franconian (Dutch and Afrikaans); here Low German is a collective term to refer to all the Low, non-Anglo-Frisian West Germanic dialects.)
Jav, of course, if language revival can be tried for other languages, it can be tried for Low Saxon and East Low German as well. In particular, the first thing is to, yes, standardize a stable literary form, but the problem is that many individuals have been refusing to do so, insisting on writing "phonetically" in their own dialects. The problem with such is that it is not necessarily phonemic in nature, very often effectively makes Low Saxon (and East Low German) subordinate to German by using German orthography, and also limits the range of readability of such.
The reason also for standardization is that it can help stem High German influence by effectively standardizing it out of any written language. In a way, yes, you could say that such would be deliberately archaic in nature due to intentionally standardizing on the basis of more, well, "pure" forms.
Furthermore, it would be a good idea to try to maintain continuity with historical Middle Low Saxon forms whenever possible at the orthographic level except when to do so would clearly break from phonemic principles in a manner that cannot be solved by the magic of orthography ("phonemic" need not mean a direct symbol-to-phoneme correspondance). The other reason to do so would be to emphasize it as simply the revival of a historically literary language rather than simply a writing system created ahistorically de novo for some otherwise unwritten set of dialects.
One must remember that such standardized forms are not, in and of themselves, a representation of actual speech, but are supposed to serve the same role that any other standardized orthography is meant to serve. But at the same time, it would be meant to indirectly strengthen native forms and deprecate outside High German forms.
Such would be only one of many different things that would be needed, of course, including trying to strongly push the official recognition and use of Low Saxon alongside High German, and in particular education in Low Saxon. The problem here is that Low Saxon (and East Low German) have been so heavily marginalized by High German and effectively eliminated from any potential official usage that it has effectively been limited to "dialect" status, unlike minority languages such as West Frisian which have successfully gained official recognition and protection.
jav, you moron, what the hell are you blabbering about???????????????????????????????????????????????
On this topic I have made the comment (since extant) that the example sounded similar to Limburgs.
If you cannot comprehend that, it probably means _you_ are an idiot.
And if you mean the two idiots who were quarelling here before that, you are an idiot again, for failing to understand it had nothing to do with me.
Serbo-Canadian in China,
>>On this topic I have made the comment (since extant) that the example sounded similar to Limburgs. <<
Not you said it sounded like Brabants (Brabantic) to you, which is a dialect of Dutch.
I, am a native speaker of that particular dialects and I can assure you that it does not in any way sound similar to this Hamburgerian low German dialect. You merely made that comment to sound interesting not knowing what you were talking about.That's why asked not to behave like an idiot.
Travis,
I haven't got a particular problem with the way the dialect is written, but it sounds.
Today most if not all versions of Low Saxon and East Low German are high german dialects...
Jav wrote:
"On the other I think the Dutch image of Norwegian literature or language is ( apart from being pretty bad) virtually limited to the idea that "The small portion of those whalehunters that actualy can write, probably couldn't get passed a grocery list""
LOL! I wonder what Ibsen would have said to that!
About a Low Saxon revival:
I think the emphazise has to be on oral use. The best thing one can hope for is that Low German could get the same position that Swiss German enjoys in Switzerland.
jav, when I said you were moron it was because it is you who has no clue what you are talking about.
Firstly of course Brabants is _always already_ Belgian, not NL. The latter would have to be specified as "Dutch Brabant".
Secondly, Brbabants being a southern dialect it necessarily sounds more like dialects spoken in Germany.
Eventually, this sample does sound VERY MUCH like someone between Hasselt and Antwerpen -- say Geel or thereabout.
And when I say that, it means that it sounds so from a perspective of someone who is listening to some old woman speaking a weird dialect that is not the standard Dutch or standard Hoch German.
Well ... I tried to simplify it as much as I could. Hope it gets through to you this time -- or just forget it: I can't get any simpler than this.
Brabantic is Brabantic it doesn't matter where it is spoken. Secondly, the Low Frankish dialects of Dutch, (Hollandic, limburgian,West-Flemish/Zeeuws and Brabantic) can never be closer to a Low German dialect from Hamburg than a more saxon influenced dialect like for example Twents/Achterhoeks (Dutch low Saxon).
No matter how hard you try to explain in your by logic deserted post. (I'm sorry but that has to be said) it can never sound like Brabantic unless you're deaf with a large imagination.
Of course Leeuwarden and Utrecht ALWAYS sound
much less like Hamburg than do Hasselt and Antwerp
and it is as simple as that -- however stubborn you may be.
Basing your judment on historic "reasons" learned by heart from a 1960s book itself based on "knowledge"defined in the mid-19th century as quasi-absolute truth just shows that you are both deaf and blind for the sonoric and indeed objective reality.
But never mind. Don't have the time for the crap any more...
There really is not need to insult me just because your information appeared to be false.
I am not insulting you by saying that your arguments are crap. i never said that you are crap.
As for "information", I just told you, you are a slave to "information" that is invalid. Origins have nothing to do with how a language sounds. The sample in question has soft "ch" like Vlaams, and not harsh Amsterdam one, it has shorter vowels like Vlaams and not dragged out Hollands ones etc.
Therefore, you are wrong, and you will be wrong however stubbornly you stomp your feet and your "arguments" will remain crap. And I have nbo time for that.
Did you eventually get it???